Burning Questions
by textbooknarcissist
Summary: Marriage was never an option.


**A/N: IM3 press tours inspired me to write this. How can they be this adorkable? **

**Disclaimer: If I owned this, Robert and Gwyneth would be sitting in press conferences all year long.**

**Summary:** _Marriage was never an option._

**Burning Questions**

"_So you're a man with everything, but nothing?_"

Marriage was never an option.

It's futile, you think. It's impossible, you know. You, being you, being non-committal, self-centered, narcissistic, cannot possibly be with a woman for your entire life. Plus, there can never be just one woman. Tony Stark deals with a lot of variables, but he never likes constants. You get bored easily, you like to experiment, you like to risk, and you like adventure. Marriage is the antonym of all that. Everyone knows that, and no one tries to play with that.

So women come and go like rolling stones and you don't bother to register their faces because you don't need to; they don't expect you to. You might pick up the same girl twice and ask her name before you bring her in (maybe not even that), and she won't feel offended that you don't remember. Because she knows, and all the women that grace your bed know that this is a one-off. Tony Stark will be a genius, billionaire, philanthropic, promiscuous bachelor his entire life.

But you know deep inside, that it hurts, it hurts so badly when Yinsen asks if you have a family, and you have no answer, so you have to live with just clicking your tongue.

It's true. Mother and father - dead, close relatives - none, significant others – are you really going to call those one-night-stands _that?_. Except Obadiah(not anymore), Rhodey, Pepper and Happy, whom do you have? And family doesn't mean just having someone. It means being there for them too. Even you know that, and you also know that though each one of them is always there for you, you never worry to make yourself available for them. You don't so much as even give them a chance to ask you for help because they're so preoccupied with cleaning your messes to dust up their own.

But that click of tongue is when you acknowledge that you need a family. And that hurts too, because who on earth with the right mind would ever want to marry a man with a reputation that you had made for yourself so finitely?

You reinvent yourself. Instead of searching for a woman, you distance yourself from them. You refocus, reassess, and re-purpose life until you finally know what you're supposed to do with it. Not drinking away to glory and hunting for arm-candy anymore. No, you metamorphose into a man when you come out of your cocoon (or the gold-titanium alloy suit), fighting off evil, saving precious young lives, being righteous and all that. And you wait for the rest to happen.

It does.

You can finally see what's in front of you and appreciate it.

And all you can think then, is that she should know. She should know that you're not the man you were, the one she was disgusted by but put up with, the man who endlessly tortured and harassed her. You're not that man anymore.

You're the man she'd like to have.

Maybe.

* * *

_"Are those bullet holes?"_

The bullet holes never go through only your suit. They go through her heart too.

She's always there when you need her, and it's like she was tailor-made for you. She disposes of your trash, sets your broken body straight, questions none of your decisions, sticks by you when no one wants to.

"You never asked me anything, when I came back."

"It wasn't my place to."

"You didn't ask to me justify my crazy decisions."

"It wasn't my right to."

"You never thought I was crazy."

"I didn't want to."

It's wrong for anyone to depend on anyone so much. It's even more wrong for someone to make someone so helpless and dependent. Yet you know, that you being heavily dependent on her is the only reason she's stuck around for so long. she'll be there as long as you're alive, and she'll try to keep you alive every time you almost die.

"You almost died again."

"But I didn't."

"What if you had?"

"Pepper, I'm alive."

"What if you weren't?"

"There's no need to cry. Even if I had died, you would've been fine. _I _depend on _you_. It's not the other way around."

"You underestimate my dependence on you, Tony."

You remain the same eccentric, narcissistic yourself, so that she's there. She threatens to leave (a lot) but never does. And one day, after a whirlwind of fiascoes involving a poisoned, dying hero, you kiss her, because how much time did you have, and how much more will you have? Isn't this all you wanted since you came out of that cave alive, since you saw Yinsen on his deathbed (and secretly felt envious that had they been alive, he would've had a family who would mourn for him), since you left her alone on the rooftop? Isn't it going to feel good when she kisses you back? Isn't it going to be wonderful when you'll finally ask her (a woman who has dominated your life for 15 years, who is one of those constant variables that life surprises you with) to spend all her life with you? Isn't it going to be the best shock of your life when she'll say yes?

It is, and more.

Besides, it's best to marry the woman who remembers (not just one, but) all the digits of your social security number.


End file.
